'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

Man tries to board train with pony in Wrexham

A man has been captured on CCTV trying to board a train accompanied by a pony.

Shocked staff watched as the man tried to get on the train at Wrexham General station with the white pony in tow.

After a conductor refused him entry, the man returned to the ticket booth where he tried to buy two tickets - for himself and the animal.

But wait - there's more!

Wrexham railway station pony seen in hospital and pub

More images have emerged of places visited by a mystery man and his pony, including a hospital A&E department and a pub.

The animal was caught on CCTV waiting in line at the reception desk at Wrexham Maelor Hospital's emergency department.

Meanwhile, shoppers have also snapped pictures as the animal was led into a pub in Wrexham.

Oh dear, there's been more riots in London. My views on the protests haven't changed, and the quote from my previous post still stands. This time round the police came out in force, leading to this gem of a comment that the BBC quoted:

From twitter: Why don't they stop sending a ridiculous amount of police out for small scale protests instead of cutting education spending?

Well, the last protest was "small scale" and look what happened there.

Anyway, while all this was going on Nick Clegg did make a good point: "Examine our proposals before taking to the streets. Listen and look before you march and shout." And indeed there are some significant points in the proposals:

Point 1: you do not pay any tuition fees up front.

Point 2: you do not have to start repaying fees until you earn more than £21k (and then it's 9% of what you earn above the threshold).

Point 3: your student loan is written off (without, I believe, affecting your credit rating) 30 years after graduating.

I do wonder just how much of the loan the average person will pay back. Hmm... let's assume an annual loan of £10k, this works out as £3k or so cost of living and £6k or so fees. Interest rates will be 0% for people on incomes of £21k, rising to 3 points above inflation for people on incomes of £41k. Let's assume a linear increase and 2% inflation, so at £31k you pay 2.5% interest.

So, after your three years of university you'll end up with a £30k loan (£10k × 3 years at 0% interest). This is actually slightly better than the current system, in that currently you do pay interest (pegged at inflation) from day 1, although your loan before interest under the old system would only be £18k or so.

Let's say you go into work bang on the £21k threshold, and each year at work you get a 3% rise. That's probably a highly unrealistic scenario, but it'll do for some rough numbers. I vaguely remember there being nice equations to do with applying interest, but I can't remember what they were so I'm going to do this the old fashioned way with mad Excel skillz.

That's... not what I expected. The politicians weren't lying when they said that most people won't repay the full amount. Or were they? Just how much do you pay over the 30 year period?

I'll leave working that out as an exercise for the reader, though I'll give you a hint: they're still lying.

Crackdown on lunar-filled crime (via BBC News)

Extra police officers are to patrol the streets of Brighton on nights when there is a full moon.

It follows research by the Sussex force which concluded there was a rise in violent incidents when the moon was full - and also on paydays.
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[Insp Andy Parr] told the BBC: "From my experience, over 19 years of being a police officer, undoubtedly on full moons, we do seem to get people with, sort of, stranger behaviour - more fractious, argumentative."
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